Improvement Insights Blog
Psychological Safety in Quality Improvement
If you’re doing Quality Improvement, you should always be in a learning mode. If you create a safe space for people to learn (and to fail), you’re creating conditions where Quality Improvement can grow and thrive.
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“Well hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“One of the barriers I find to getting people involved in Quality Improvement is they have this fear that somebody will ridicule whatever they’ve decided to try to do and make fun of their knowledge of statistics or whatever it is. That’s one of the things that stopped them from trying anything, right?
“So one of the things to think about is how do you create psychological safety for these folks where it’s okay to learn? It’s okay to learn, right? Maybe you do fail. So what? It’s a learning event, right?
“All of these things are learning events, and so I want you to get this idea that if we embrace people’s learning curve and they’re going to have some frustration, they have to get through that frustration. Once they get beyond it, then they’ll be fine.
“So create a safe space for Quality Improvement. Don’t lord knowledge over them because you know more than they do. Everybody knows more than you do. I saw Bill Nye, he says, “I can learn something from everyone I meet”. Bill Nye, the science guy.
“So the idea here is, we’re always in a learning mode. I’m always learning. I learn something new about quality about once a week, once a month, right? Stuff that I didn’t know, because I didn’t need it yet.
“All right, so that’s my Quality Improvement Insight for this week. Create a safe space for psychological safety so that people can embrace Quality and we can make it move more fully out into the world and make it a better place.”
